"The best thing of all is to take the enemy's country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good..."

Monday, November 20, 2006

There's something rotten in Russia

Iraq is the most important foreign policy issue for the United States. However, while our president stumbles along in that quagmire, there's every reason to be worried about Russia, or China/India* for that matter.

Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned on the direct orders of the Kremlin because of his biting mockery of President Putin, according to a former Soviet spy now living in Britain.

Oleg Gordievsky, the most senior KGB agent to defect to Britain, said that the attempt to kill Mr Litvinenko had been state-sponsored.

It was carried out by a Russian friend and former colleague who had been recruited secretly in prison by the FSB, the successor to the KGB. The Italian who allegedly put poison in Mr Litvinenko’s sushi “had nothing to do with it”.

“Of course it is state-sponsored. He was such an obvious enemy. Only the KGB is able to do this. The poison was very sophisticated. They have done this before — they poisoned Anna Politkovskaya (the campaigning journalist murdered on October 7) on a plane last year. Who else would know where she was sitting and could poison her food? Probably also it was the KGB that shot her.”

*The above-linked Boston Globe story recounts efforts by China to build a friendship with India.